The present invention relates to a salt substitute, that is a substance able to replace totally or partially the salt in a recipe by playing the same role, that is to be able to give to the product that is made with this substitute, the salty taste and the other qualitative and taste attributes the presence of salt would give. Thereby, the invention relates to pharmacological, cosmetics, food, functional food, nutraceuticals and veterinary compositions field, where a salty taste is wanted but where the salt would be absent or in very low quantity compared to what is generally used.
Excess of salt consumption in all its forms is a public health problem. Every year, 12 000 000 people in the world and 25 000 people in France die because of salt overdose. Indeed, an overly important salt consumption thickens the blood, gradually blocks the arteries, causes hypertension, possibly causes myocardial infarction, a blood clot in the brain and a cerebrovascular accident, osteoporosis, hypertension, cancers, etc. In terms of hypertension, salt has been considered for years as a major danger. Hypertension affects about 7 millions french people and is a strong risk factor for cardiovascular disease, the number one cause of mortality in France. Furthermore, it seems salt excess is correlated with left ventricular hypertrophy, an important risk factor for cardiovacular disease appearance.
Regarding osteoporosis field, it is known that bone is constructed with available calcium, however all the intaken calcium is not assimilated. Part of the calcium is evacuated in urine and salt increases this excretion. The more the diet is salty, the more the calcium leaks are important. Finally, salt is also involved in cancer incidence, in particular in gastric carcinoma incidence. Therefore, it is recommended not to make excesses of salt or of products conserved by salting, delicatessen (<<charcuteries>> in french).
Salt excess is therefore very strongly suspected of being involved in the appearance and aggravation of numerous serious diseases. Yet salt is widely used in food-industry because it is cheap and it also increases taste, masks bitter flavours and gives food relief. Consequently, transformed products contain excessive quantities of salt compared to the amount the body needs, which according to WHO is about 5 grams per day. For example, a sandwich with delicatessen and cheese contains in average 4 g of salt. Besides, there is a lot of salt in bread (a french stick contains about 4 g), delicatessen, cheese, pastries, cereals, cooked dishes, prepared soups, pastas, appetizer biscuits and cakes, peanuts, anchovies, hamburgers, pizzas, etc.
French people consume about 7.9 g of salt, and even more, so much so it is difficult to measure exactly the quantity of salt everyone adds into his food. 10% of them consume more than 12 g per day, and some consume 25 g per 24 hours. Consequently there is an urgent need to have a substance able to replace salt totally or partially so as to limit the quantity of salt in these compositions while preserving their salty taste.
This goal is reached according to the invention thanks to the use of vinegar or an equivalent of it as a substitute for all or part of the salt used for the making of a composition. It can concern food, pharmaceutical, cosmetic, functional food, nutraceutical and veterinary compositions or an intermediate composition which is part of the constitution of these compositions. The invention relates of course to any kind of vinegar and notably to wine or cidre vinegar, and more generally to fruit, cereal, malt, rice, corn, milk, etc. vinegars. Therefore, we can mention a vinegar with an acidity dosed approximately between 3 to 10%, more preferably 5% acidity.
We hereby understand by vinegar equivalent, a product with a strong acidity, except acetic acid concentrated at more than about 50%, particularly at more than about 85%. Vinegar is an aqueous solution with a strong acidity, resulting from wine or another alcoholized liquid fermentation. Thus, it contains particles and substances coming from the plant which gives it its different properties.
Vinegar or one of its equivalents according to the invention can be presented in a liquid or a solid form, for example in a dried powder form when for instance it concerns a dehydrated product, or even a freeze-dried product. Therefore it can be a free dehydrated form or a dehydrated form associated to a support, particularly food support like flour or another product such as maltodextrine for instance. But it can also concern other supports like cosmetic or pharmaceutical supports for example, depending on the composition's field of application. As an example, in a composition based on flour, vinegar or an equivalent of vinegar in a liquid form can be used to replace all or part of the salt at the rate of 0.2% to 5% of flour weight, that is in the order of 2 to 50 g per flour kg. In the case of vinegar or an equivalent of it in dehydrated form, it can be used at the rate of 1 liter for about 95 g of flour, that is in the order of 0.05 to 5% of flour weight, that is again in the order of 0.5 to 50 g per flour kilo.
The use of vinegar or one of its equivalents according to the present invention is remarkable because it enables to decrease the quantity of salt generally contained in food by at least 60% while conserving their properties and notably their gustative value. The invention is remarkable because vinegar or an equivalent of it also allows at least a 33% yeast quantity decrease in all the bakery products and up to the order of a 40% sugar decrease or even more in all sweetened products. The use of vinegar or an equivalent of it instead of salt also allows on a nutritional point of view to approximately a 30% decrease of the induced glycemia increase compared to normal bread, and we can observe a lower and slower absorption (about 30%) of the sugars found in the bakery products.
Vinegar or one of its equivalents can be used according to the invention as a replacement of all or a part of the salt in the composition without making substantial modifications in the preparation process. The person skilled in the art can determine variants for these processes of preparation likely to enable the replacement of salt by vinegar without modifying the aspect or the other gustative properties of the compositions. Indeed, thanks to the invention, we can replace an important part of the salt contained notably in food, more particularly in bakery products like bread, viennese pastry, puff pastry, shortcrust pastry and shortbread dough, biscuits, sourdoughs. But the invention can also apply to pastry, delicatessen, cheese industry, cereals, cooked dishes, prepared soups, pastas, apetizer cakes, hamburgers, pizzas, etc.
Of course, this invention also relates to a composition such as defined hereabove comprising vinegar or an equivalent of it instead of all or part of the salt normally present. It can concern notably food, pharmaceutical, cosmetic, functional food, nutraceutical or veterinary compositions, or an intermediary composition which is part of the constitution of these compositions, characterized by the fact that it contains vinegar or it has been made with vinegar as a substitute of all or part of the salt generally present in the said composition. An example of such a composition can be for instance flour associated with dehydrated vinegar.
The invention also relates to the making process of these compositions which consists in blending the vinegar or a vinegar equivalent instead of all or part of the salt normally present. The use of vinegar according to this invention allows to suppress alkalinizing food such as sugars which are abundantly used in bakery, pastry, biscuits, meats, fish, fruits and vegetables. Another advantage of the invention resides in the fact that the presence of vinegar or an equivalent in the flour storerooms, in artisans' millers' as well as industrials' storehouses, spares the use of insecticides, to decimate all insects such as Curculionidae, mites, sawtoothed grain beetles, etc. Besides, the use of vinegar according to the invention enables to decrease and even to suppress salt in brines used notably in delicatessen and meat conservation.
Additional advantages and characteristics of the invention will appear from the following examples concerning the use of vinegar as a substitute of all or part of the salt in the preparation of bakery products. In the following examples the used vinegar is cidre vinegar which is called in the examples <<“R” product>>, but any other vinegar or equivalent of it except the ones that have a very strong acidity as mentioned previously, can be used.